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Airpush - Even more reasons developers should stay away!

My last posting of the Airpush's fake eCPM to attract developers has gotten quite an attention. That posting alone shot this blog's page views to above 300 in 1 day! A new record. Thanks for the support!

Now, we could have used some feedback from Airpush, and finally there is some.

Airpush update... or the lack of!

So, after a week and a blog post, Robert finally replied. Here is what he wrote:

"Hi Bill,
I apologize for the dropping eCPM, we have been working on the tech side over the past two days. I can also offer you a new SDK that incorporates bugsense to see if there is some outside problem. I apologize for the delayed respons.
Cheers,
Bob"

Over the past two days? The eCPM has been dropping for so long, and been highlighted since ages ago, and you guys been working on it for the past two days??

I am pretty sure there is not a need for updating my codes with the new SDK. Now if I were the only developer who is having a dropping eCPM, then maybe it is something wrong with my code. Do a search on this, and you will find many others have similar problems. Heck, just check my previous posting on Airpush.

No Bob, I am not going to update my apps with the new SDK. Over time, as my revenue dwindles further down, I will leave Airpush totally. If Airpush starts to keep it's words, and stop cheating their developers (yes, I am saying they are cheating as they are still sending out emails with the fake eCPM), then I will write a glorified review of them, and spread it anywhere I can!

More Unhappiness

I am still wondering how they do it? I was chatting with another developer yesterday, and while chatting, his revenue dropped by $1?? This is truly a WTF moment! We laughed it off though, so <keeping this family friendly> used to it!

And have you noticed? "Today's average" in the Airpush dashboard is moving? Down? It is at $4.71 now! Way to go Airpush! You see where this is gonna go? Slowly the average is gonna be closer to the real average we are getting. And then, Airpush is gonna say "hey, you're getting close to the average!". Will we start seeing emails from Airpush stating eCPM of $1 - $4 instead? I doubt it!

Poor Developers

I am also curious about Airpush's claim of almost 76k developers. Is this for real? If you click on payment, at the bottom of the screen, under "payment history", you have "payment id". Check out the differences between the numbers from one day to the next, and you will see it is around the 1k range instead. I could be wrong here, and others might have a different number range, here is a capture of mine:

Are your numbers within the same range? If you have a different set of numbers, then maybe the 76k number is right. Otherwise, over 74k of the developers are not making money?

Undesired

Maybe my previous posting has gotten some attention from Airpush. I know this blog gets some attention from other ad networks, Leadbolt, AppLovin, AppBrain, Everbadge, they've all contacted me or mentioned about my postings. At least these other ad networks appreciate even small developers like me.

Maybe the last posting is the reason we are seeing a higher number of eCPM? I am finally seeing a little higher number of pushes too, check the graph towards the far right:

Till Airpush comes clean, beware of the fake poopoo they are promising!

There is no way that they have 75K developers in base because there is around 300K apps on market and if we take reasonable assumption that a lot of them have more than one app (like you for example) then we can see that numbers does not match.

Haha, dear Bill, I'm very glad to found your blog. For me it's funny to read all of that, not because youre funny guy, but because all I read from your post is exactly the same and my experience with Airpush.

I checked my total pushes with "all time" option in report and pushes constantly growing while earnings falling down from week to week.

For example, now I earn AVG per day 3,57x (-357%) less than before (few months ago), with 2x more pushes :).

I hope they will change they policy soon because I think they will loose their clients soon.

Btw, Bill, is there any other player on the market which you recommend to try (I know for Leadbolt and Startapp)?

I'm serious this close to bookmarking this site. Pure internet Gold! Bill couldn't be more right everything he writes and I don't even know the guy. Let's do some further analysis based on Bill's analysis. I ran my numbers and it would appear that between 1000 and 1500 developers have payment receipts on a daily basis. 76000 developers, lol, maybe but only under 1500 of them actually make money or are active. Like McDonald's over a billion served...maybe true but how many of those billion are dead now and not active users.

As far as pushes, wtf, 4/12 20k in pushes, 4/16 12,000. That's a lot of opting out. 4000 new app installs on the 16th. So your telling me 12,000 users opted out or uninstalled before they could be served an ad. Sure why not!

I love notifications. I really do. Way better than a big ass wall of apps in my opinion. And they call them interstitials. That word gives me a headache just looking at it and I won't dare try to say it, way too many syllables. Carry on everyone!

I used to make above 10$/day but sinxe last three days i'm just getting 2-3$. Even the eCPM has fallen to 3 from 6. The dashboard is displaying all wrong stats with much lesser new install numbers. I've a tracking system for monitoring new downloads and according to it my downloads had increased by half in last few days!!

Now today it is displaying 0 installs and 0 pushes even when i can see 2K+ combined installs of all those apps from today. I'm losing trust in them and will start using another ad service in newer apps.

I saw your previous post a while back and decided to write airpush a long list of problems that I had (much similar to yours) , and then got same ans that is 'we are having technical diificulties, and our team is looking into it with high priority' 14K pushes with $1 CPM. I can tell you I have written like 10 tickets just mentioning their eCPM's, but it led to nothing.I am using leadbolt in my new apps , theses people are really helpful, I have even got some personel help, I have got one of them on my skype contact list. Go with leadbolt its better than airpush,3-4 times better in earnings.

I haven't received my last two weekly payment. My CPM has dropped to 1.00 - 1.50. All I get are BS answers, technical issue's, accounting issue's. I believe AIRPUSH is not a stable company and basically stealing from Developers.

If you are who I think you are, then I believe we have had an exchange of emails before..

I'm afraid I don't agree with you on likening SendDroid to AirPush in any way. I work with a lot of developers personally and most of them have used AP or currently are using it alongside SendDroid. In this capacity, I do hear complaints about AP and many other networks.

Yes there are problems sometimes and I'm not gong to lie and say that you're the only one who had a problem with us - be it SDK integration or payment or reports etc. However, you were not ignored or left on your own. I'm sure you were offered help. Just like everybody else.

Things can and do go wrong. Many times I get people on Skype or Gtalk telling me that they don't see any pushes. Before I used to forward the problem directly to Tech but now I know better. In most cases, it would be some problem with the integration. And 99% of the time, I can actually fix it myself.

In terms of earnings, yes I have had people having $20 as their eCPM consistently. I also have had people with $2 eCPM. But I am not going to tell you that you WILL get $20 eCPM. Whether or not you do, depends on factors like the source of traffic (Countries), demand and engagement. Should all those factors work for you, then yes, you will most definetely get a very high eCPM. But if your app performs in the average range, then you'll mostly get around $3 - $4 ePCM.

So no, I do not think we are anything like AP after seeing the colorfully descriptive way you mentioned them. :)

Nice to see you taking action in correcting the image of SendDroid. I probably will give it a go again and publish performance reports for other developers, and then let the judgement be done by others.

The issue I had was that I had over 200 installs and only 8 pushes and an eCPM of far lower than $2. Ridiculous really.

You know, many new and not very "seasoned" developers will be lead in believing the nonsense. We know over the day the eCPMs most likely get lower. The first hour reports don't reflect actual performance (you even mentioned $30 eCPM in one of your emails to me).

So, let's come clean to developers. We are supposed to be your partners here, not someone to take advantage over.

You'd see from my posts that I always encourage feedback and suggestions. I personally love the idea of working together as I do understand, like you very articulately put it as well, that we are partners in this.

We have no intention of taking advantage of anybody. I'd personally love to work as closely and transparantly with everyone as I possibly can.

About eCPMs, well, the only time it can ever be taken with actual seriousness is over time. Since its performance based, it is really impossible to keep it constant. There are factors which really are not in our control, like the user engagement.

But yes, I'd like you to give it a go again in a few days time. We are currently fixing some technical issues at the moment and i would really rather have you join in once everything is fixed.

My problem with the latest upgrade from Airpush is that ALL my apps (over 50) have a ratio of 5.4 pushes to installs. This is impossible unless my pushes are being capped, or the stats are being reported incorrectly. This has been going on over a month.

example:divide your pushes by installs-100 installs = 540 pushes200 installs = 1080 pushesI have found all my apps have a constant ratio of 5.4 if I follow this formula- no matter what time of day.

When releasing a new app, it is understood that it will rank far down the food chain. After all, your app is new and unproven just yet.

What Google has done on the Play store is that they have given new app an opportunity to live, a chance to get to a more respectable place in the world of the unknown, the Google Play ranking algorithm.

Good looks go a long way in getting downloads for your apps. I'm a fan of looking out for beautiful app designs. I've looked at so many apps, gotten so much inspiration, but have yet to achieve anything that I can be proud of.

Blame genetics if you must. I am a developer, and although I play the guitar and love music and beautiful art and images (even tried photography once), I suck in the design area. I can give an idea, a design, but cant execute it. I'm a coder damnit!